Death of rider, four horses prompt more calls to end Feria de Cali´s cruel cabalgata

One of the most controversial events at Cali´s (Colombia) annual salsa festival, La Cabalgata or horse parade, is again under attack after the death of one rider and two horses.

The event has long been criticised as cruel, with injuries and deaths to animals common. This year a female rider died after being thrown from her horse. Reports vary, but some say spectators throwing flour – a common and also controversial activity during the fair – blinded the horse. Other reports say the flash of a camera in the horse´s face caused it to panic. Whatever the case, panic among thousands of horses surrounded by a rowdy crowd, mounted by often drunken, inexperienced riders is frequently a recipe for disaster. Cali police said 14 animals were injured, four of them fatally. Another eight were found abandoned after the event. Police and animal rights groups have laboured for greater controls, but to little avail. Some 2,500 animals were registered, but some 3,000 were in the Dec. 26 parade. Riders are banned from drinking, but animal rights activists have scores of photos of riders drinking hard liquor already in extreme states of drunkenness. “It´s necessary to give this sad outcome some reflection,” Cali Ombudsman Andrés Santamaría said after this year´s event. “We have spent many years trying to have a parade in Cali in the best way possible, but we haven´t been able to,” Santamaría said in an interview published Friday in El Universal. Police, the city and the ombudsman have tried vainly as well to increase the number of veterinarians on hand to treat injured animals, but this year again, there were fewer veterinarians than had been promised. One persistent complaint is that many riders are gangsters and their girlfriends with silicone enhanced breasts who lack any compassion for the animals nor respect for authorities, let alone the animals. Many of the animals are without shoes, despite walking for kilometres on Cali´s crowded paved streets. Opportunities to drink water are scarce. Cali Major Rodrigo Guerrero said the city now is examining whether La Cabalgata should be replaced with another event. As brutal as the parade is, it is a politically sensitive issue. Some say Bogotá Mayor Gustavo Petro´s imminent ouster as mayor was due in part to his banning of bull fights in the capital.
http://davidhogben.com/2014/01/03/death-of-rider-two-horses-prompt-more-calls-to-end-feria-de-calis-cruel-cabalgata/

U.S. Approves a Horse Slaughterhouse, Sees two more plants

WASHINGTON | Fri Jun 28, 2013 8:30pm EDT

(Reuters) - A New Mexico meat plant received federal approval on Friday to slaughter horses for meat, a move that drew immediate opposition from animal rights group and will likely be opposed by the White House.

The pictures are too horrifying to post on this Blog.

 http://stophorseslaughter.com/site/?page_id=2  

For More information follow link.

The U.S. Agriculture Department said it was required by law to issue a "grant of inspection" to Valley Meat Co, Roswell, New Mexico, because it had met all federal requirements. Now, the USDA is obliged to assign meat inspectors to the plant.

The USDA also said it may soon issue similar grants for plants in Missouri and Iowa.
Horse meat cannot be sold as food in the United States, but it can be exported. Attempts to reach Valley Meat Co via a number listed online were unsuccessful.
Valley Meat would be the first meat plant to be allowed to slaughter horses since Congress banned it in 2006.

It is not known when the plant will start production, but two bills in Congress want to ban horse slaughter and President Obama has asked Congress to ban it.
The Humane Society of the United States and Front Range Equine Rescue threatened on Friday to sue the USDA, saying horses are raised as pets and as working animals. Because they are not intended as food animals, horses are given medications banned from other livestock, the groups said, questioning if the meat would be safe.

The USDA says it can test for residues of 130 pesticide and veterinary drugs. It also has safeguards to keep horse meat out of the food supply.

Congress effectively banned horse slaughter in 2006 by saying the USDA could not spend any money to inspect horse plants. Without USDA inspection, meat plants cannot operate.
The ban was part of the annual USDA funding bill and was renewed a year at a time through 2011. The prohibition expired in October 2011.

Lawmakers could vote on reinstating the ban in coming weeks when the USDA appropriations bills are debated in the House and Senate. But no date has been set to consider the bills and it could be months before work is completed.

The USDA said it was required by law to issue the grant of inspection because Valley Meat met all federal requirements. At one point, the company sued the USDA for an overly long review of its application. Once it issues a grant of inspection, the USDA is obliged to assign meat inspectors to a meat plant.

"Until Congress acts, the department must comply with current law," said a USDA spokeswoman.
Valley Meat retrofitted its plant for horses after drought weakened its cattle slaughter business.
Horse meat is sold for human consumption in China, Russia, Mexico and other foreign nations and is sometimes used as feed for zoo animals.

But in the United States, horses enjoy a higher stature, more akin to house pets, than to hogs, cattle and chickens.

An estimated 130,000 U.S. horses are shipped annually to slaughter in Canada and Mexico. Groups have quarreled for a decade whether a ban on slaughter will save horses from a cruel death or lead to abandonment by owners of animals they cannot afford to feed or treat for illness.

Early this year, regulators discovered that horse meat was being sold as beef in Ireland. The mislabeled meat was found in meatballs sold by Swedish retailer IKEA in much of Europe and in other outlets.
USDA conducts tests on domestic and imported products to identify the species that yielded the meat. The tests can distinguish beef, sheep, swine, poultry, deer and horse.
As well, USDA stepped up its species testing in April because of the meat adulteration scandal in Europe.
(Reporting By Charles Abbott; Editing by Bernard Orr)

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/29/us-usa-agriculture-horse-idUSBRE95S00820130629

Is the U.S. Government Complicit in the Killing of Over a Thousand Wild Horses?

By Billy House
January 29, 2013 | 8:22 a.m.

A bipartisan pair of lawmakers is urging Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to disclose whether as many as 1,700 federally protected wild horses now unaccounted for were sold to a middleman who illegally transported them to Mexico for slaughter.

Reps. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., and Ed Whitfield, R-Ky., in a letter to Salazar being circulated this week to other lawmakers to cosign, write they are troubled by the department’s lack of response to “legitimate concerns” that the government may have sold these captured mustangs to a “kill buyer,” who then shipped them to a slaughterhouse.

“It is our understanding that this investigation is ongoing,” the letter states, referring to an inquiry by Interior’s Office of Inspector General. But it also says that a number of animal-welfare organizations and worried citizens have been raising concerns, and that “as of today, these citizens haven’t heard from you.”

Adam Sarvana, a spokesman for Grijalva, the ranking Democrat on the House Subcommittee on Public Lands and Environmental Regulations, said the two lawmakers want Salazar to provide answers before he leaves the Obama administration. Salazar has said he will leave his Cabinet position at the end of March.

Tom Gorey, a Bureau of Land Management spokesman, said Monday that the inspector general has not yet released its findings and that “we don’t know when [the investigation] is going to be done.” But he said it would be wrong to suggest that the bureau sold any of these horses realizing they might be sent to slaughterhouses.

In their letter to Salazar, Grijalva and Whitfield point to a report last September by ProPublica that the bureau sold the more than 1,700 captured mustangs at about $10 a head to Tom Davis, described as a Colorado livestock hauler and a proponent of the horse-meat industry. Salazar is from Colorado. Some published reports say Davis claims to know Salazar and claims to have hauled cattle for him for years. But that is contested. An Interior Department spokeswoman says the secretary has no recollection of Davis, including any business dealings with him.

“As you are aware, the ProPublica revelations have provoked a substantial public outcry,” the two lawmakers wrote. The letter notes, for example, that in November, the American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign delivered 25,130 signatures to the Interior Department “from concerned citizens around the country.”

The Bureau of Land Management is the federal agency in charge of overseeing the approximately 31,500 wild horses and 5,800 wild burros roaming federally managed range land in 10 Western states. According to the bureau’s website, these horses and burros have virtually no natural predators and their herd sizes can double about every four years. As a result, “the agency must remove thousands of animals from the range each year to control herd sizes,” the bureau says.

Since 2004, the bureau has had the legal right under an amendment passed by Congress to sell some of these wild horses.

But Gorey said that, despite the technically unrestricted sales authority of that legislation, known as the Burns Amendment, the bureau has not knowingly sold any of these horses or burros for slaughter and would not do so. The bills of sale are required to contain an explanation by the buyer of what they intend to do with the animals, including a promise that animals bought will not be slaughtered.
And in early January, in response to the Davis investigation, the BLM issued new policy conditions and restrictions regarding such sales, in what it described as another step forward in improvement in ensuring the health and humane treatment of wild horses and burros. The new policies included stipulations that no more than four wild horses or wild burros may be bought by an individual or group within a six-month period from the BLM without prior approval of the Bureau’s Assistant Director for Renewable Resources and Planning -- and that purchasers must describe where they intend to keep the animals for the first six months following the sale.

Still, no public explanation has surfaced as to what, exactly, happened to the more than 1,700 horses purchased by Davis since 2009--nearly 70 percent of all the horses sold under the program. And animal welfare activists are worried that they wound up on the killing floor.

“We respectfully ask you to give a written response within the next ten days,” Grijalva and Whitfield wrote.

 http://www.nationaljournal.com/congress/is-the-u-s-government-complicit-in-the-killing-of-over-a-thousand-wild-horses-20130129